


Red's Strays

by LaceyBarbedWire



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Once Upon a Time (TV), Rizzoli & Isles, Sleepaway Camp - Fandom, Taxi Brooklyn, The Blacklist (TV), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Movies)
Genre: Big ol Family, F/F, Fluff, Massive Crossover, Too many kids, shtuff, strays
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 07:52:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4383500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaceyBarbedWire/pseuds/LaceyBarbedWire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Red's starting to get the feeling that his tendency for picking up Strays is getting out of hand. Somehow he's wound up raising seven girls in one house. Shenanigans. Oh so much shenanigans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red's Strays

Red was starting to get the feeling that his tendency for picking up strays was getting out of hand. Somehow he'd ended up with seven young women living in his large town house in San Francisco. It was absurd. Some had been unavoidable. Maura and Cat's fathers had both been good friends of Red's, even though Cat's father had been a cop. When they and their wives had died he'd felt that it was for the best that he take in their daughters. To say that he found the timing of their deaths, mere hours apart, suspicious would be an understatement.

Regina had likewise been a simple decision. Henry Mills was one of the few men that Red could honestly call a good, honest, man. He had horrible taste in women though, which had led to Regina's current living situation. Henry had come to Red asking, begging really, for him to take care of his daughter and hide her from his wife. Red had eventually agreed and, as he'd started to realize how badly Cora had already damaged her eight year old daughter his loathing for the woman had grown even greater, something he hadn't thought possible.

Heather had, initially, been a more practical choice. Back in the Seventies and Eighties, when HYDRA had firmly entrenched themselves in the United States, the Sawyers had been their main muscle in Texas and the surrounding states. While they'd never risen higher than Lieutenants, more than a few members of the family had volunteered for HYDRA's scientific experiments. A good portion of the family had actually survived the fall of HYDRA, only to get killed by a group of vigilantes in a delicious bit of irony. Still, HYDRA was known for leaving genetic surprises in the families who supported them. Seeing as Heather was the only surviving child of the Sawyers young enough to have possibly inherited any HYDRA 'gifts', he'd decided that it was only prudent to track her down and take her in. She'd been the first of his girls actually, as he found her at the tender age of three, and since then he'd grown very fond of her.

Angela had been brought to his attention two years ago by a friend who was working in Child Services. At fourteen she'd already proven to be one of the most inventive killers Red had ever seen. But that wasn't why he'd taken her in. No, he'd owed the friend who found Angela a favor. The man had realized that Angela was never going to get the help she needed in the system, so he'd called in the favor and had Red take her in. Currently, after realizing what exactly had happened to her, Red was debating whether he loathed Angela's unfortunately deceased aunt or Regina's mother more.

Then there was Faith, who he'd found on a trip to Boston, tying up loose ends. The Sawyers had only been mid level officers at best, their influence mainly confined to the American South, but they'd been practically HYDRA royalty compared to Faith's mother, who'd simply been a low level thug, cannon fodder. That being said, the woman had gotten away with several of HYDRA's prototype weapons, and there'd been evidence connecting her to the death of Maura's father, so Red had made the trip in person. Nothing much had come of it, the evidence was circumstantial upon closer examination. He'd still killed her of course, no need to leave potential tools for HYDRA lying around. But then her found out that she had a daughter, a fact Glenn had somehow missed. An eight year old that reminded him far too much of Lizzie. So, he'd taken her home. He had made her an orphan after all. And, as with all his other girls, Faith had soon grown on him.

The most recent addition, Skye, he blamed on his girls as a whole. Before he'd somehow become a foster parent he never would have taken her in. Hired maybe, but not more or less adopt. Regardless, he'd never seen someone who more perfectly demonstrated the phrase 'too smart for their own good'. Skye was one of the most talented hackers Red had ever seen, but at sixteen her impulse control was abysmal. She'd been caught hacking into the system of one of his associates. Said associate had traced the hacker to San Francisco and asked Red to take care of it. Red had been surprised to find a teenager, who turned out to be a friend of Cat's and an orphan. His experience with his girls had made him well aware of what was coming, so he'd bitten the bullet and taken her in. Then he'd had a different hacker break into the school's computer system and make sure that none of his other girls had friends that were orphans. Dembe had laughed at him, but Red had no desire to get blindsided again. Seven sixteen year old girls in one house was plenty.  
\-----------------------------------------------------  
Red opened the fridge and sighed at what he saw. The contents were those of a teenager's, not a mature adult's. Shaking his head, Red grabbed the egg carton, immediately letting out an exasperated sigh upon realizing it was empty. He took it out and looked for something that wasn't loaded with obscene amounts of sugar and wasn't Maura's tofu. There was a blue Yoplait carton, but to Red's disgust it turned out to be Chocolate Cream Pie flavored. He sighed again. Maura, Angela, and Regina could be counted on to eat mostly healthy, but they were outnumbered and Maura's food tended toward the disgusting. Red walked into the dining room, where the girls were eating breakfast.

"What's this?" He demanded, holding up the offending Yoplait container.

"Yogurt." Faith said simply, looking confused at the question.

"No, yogurt is fruit flavored. This...thing is not yogurt."

"Nobody's making you eat it Dad." Faith pointed out. Red faltered for a second, as he always did when one of his girls called him Dad, then continued.

"Well you appear to be trying." He said, holding up the empty egg carton. Heather flinched, and he looked over to see her eating a scrambled eggs and peanut butter burrito. "Heather, what's the rule if you empty a container?"

"Throw it away." She muttered. Red nodded, then turned his attention back to Faith.

"It was your turn to go grocery shopping for the week, wasn't it?"

"Hey, I went grocery shopping!" Faith protested. "I got plenty of food!" Regina snorted, getting a piece of syrup covered chocolate chip Eggo waffles to the face in response. As he knew Regina would clean it up, Red chose to ignore this exchange.

"Believe it or not Faith, your sisters and I would like to die of old age, not sugar induced heart attacks." He paused and looked at Skye, who was in the process of pouring Red Bull into a cup of coffee. "Except for Skye apparently."

"Hey!" Skye protested, though she didn't stop pouring.

"Skye, that's incredibly unhealthy." Maura said, frowning in concern. Skye shrugged.

"Well some of us need help staying awake in class." She muttered.

"Which reminds me." Red said, turning to look directly at her. "I have some business to attend to today, so I won't be able to drive you to school. But Skye, if I get one more phone call from a teacher saying that you skipped class I will put Maura in charge of your diet for a week." Skye stared at him in horror while Maura brightened. "Cat, the same goes for you with fighting on school property." The short haired girl gave him a look of horror as well.

"Not even in self defense?"

"Considering your fondness for antagonizing people specifically to make them fight you, yes." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys for the two reinforced Suburbans. "One for those going straight home, one for those in clubs. Who's driving?" Cat reached for a key, but Red quickly moved it out of her reach. "Who's driving that isn't Cat?"

"Oh c'mon!" Cat protested.

"You've wrecked three cars in sixth months." Red reminded her sternly. "How you managed to pass your driver's test in the first place is beyond me." Regina held up a hand.

"I'll take everyone who's coming straight home." She said. Red nodded and handed her the keys, then handed the other pair to Heather, who grinned.

"Don't go anywhere else." He said seriously. "School and back, that's it." There was a series of resigned nods. His girls were used to his 'paranoia', and had long since given up on contesting it. Red hugged each of them, giving them a kiss to the top of the head, and left.  
\------------------------------------------------------------------  
Twenty minutes later

Red frowned, looking through the windshield of the reinforced sedan at the warehouse. "Something's wrong." He muttered. Dembe looked at him in concern.

"Should we leave?" Red thought it over, scanning the nearby rooftops. There wasn't the telltale glint of a sniper rifle from any of them. That didn't guarantee anything of course, but there hadn't been so much as a rumor of HYDRA making any sort of a comeback, and SHIELD had more pressing threats to deal with than him.

"No, but keep your gun ready." He decided, chambering a round on his own pistol before climbing out. The two men entered the building to find one of Red's associates, a Jonathan Iverson, and his bodyguards dead on the ground. Red sighed and put his hat back on his head. "I assume you had a good reason for killing him Agent Romanoff." He said blandly. There was a long moment of silence, than a short redheaded woman in a black catsuit slipped out of the shadows.

"How'd you know it was me?" She asked, raising an eyebrow. Red smiled.

"My dear, who else could kill six armed, trained men without using a gun?" The agent shrugged.

"I can think of a few." She said.

"True, but on the list of people who'd want to kill Jonathan and have the resources to employ someone of your skills, SHIELD is the prime suspect. Tell me he wasn't working for HYDRA." Romanoff gave him a strange look.

"HYDRA was destroyed in the eighties." Red gave an embarrassed laugh and shook his head.

"Right, right. I'm sorry, I find that as I get older I tend to forget such things. The spirit is eager but the mind is dull." She looked at him for another moment.

"He was working on smuggling old HYDRA weapons out of Germany. Their World War Two stuff. Apparently we missed a cache." Red raised an eyebrow and tsked.

"So that's what he wanted to see me about. I thought..." He shook his head. "Oh well. It's a pity, but understandable." He paused. "Odd though, that a cache slipped through SHIELD's net." Romanoff shrugged unconcernedly.

"They're interesting toys, but without the power source they're also useless." Red nodded blandly.

"Of course. Safe travels Agent." He said with a smile before turning around. "Time to go Dembe."


End file.
